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Enjoy the sweet sounds of Ricky McQuillan every Saturday evening as you dine with partners, friends and family at Stix & Stones.

Ricky is a singer-songwriter from Belfast with a distinct soulful sound to compliment your dining experience. From soft acoustic to upbeat tunes, Ricky caters to an array of tastes to help make your evening a memorable one. Be sure to check him out every Saturday night from 9pm - 11:30pm.

Stix and Stones restaurant, Belfast is celebrating winning the Hospitality Sector Award at the thirteenth annual 'Belfast Business top 50' 2016, held in Titanic Belfast on Friday 14th October 2016.

On accepting the award, general manager Stephen McMillan said 'I am delighted to accept this award on behalf of the director's, management and staff.' 'Tourism in Belfast is going from strength to strength with more people visiting Northern Ireland than ever before.' 'These are exciting times for hospitality and we at Stix and Stones are privileged to be a part of it.'

We would also like to thank Orlaith Carland and Connla McCann from Aisling Events for organising such a great event.

Stix and Stones are delighted to announce we have been awarded the TripAdvisor 2016 Certificate of Excellence award. This highly coveted award recognises the consistently great reviews we've earned on TripAdvisor, the industry leading customer review platform.

The award celebrates hospitality excellence and is given only to establishments that consistently achieve outstanding traveller reviews on TripAdvisor. Winners of the certificate of Excellence are located all over the world and represent the upper echelon of businesses listed on the website, with only 10% receiving the prestigious award.

Stix and Stones would like to thank you, our customers, for your valued and positive feedback and reviews. We continue to lead the way in offering Belfast's premium dining experience and our fantastic customers have been a huge part of this journey.

…..but art will live forever! Art was very much the focus of the evening last Wednesday night (1st July) as Stix and Stones celebrated its first birthday by playing venue to the first ever Arts Dragons event. And what better way to celebrate our first birthday than to raise money for the arts in Northern Ireland.

Hosted by Mairtin O'Muilleoir MLA in association with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Arts & Business NI, Arts Dragons gave four arts organisations, Kabosh Theatre Company, Belfast Film Festival, Wheelworks, and Belfast Community Gospel Choir the opportunity to pitch for financial support from leading business organisations.

The evening was also attended by several special guests including actress Bronagh Waugh (Hollyoaks, The Fall) who spoke about the importance of the arts and the impact relationships between arts and commercial organisations can have.

(Stix and Stones management team with Bronagh Waugh and John Linehan)

Overall, the night was a massive success with over £22,600 raised for the Arts community in Northern Ireland and a great nights fun for all involved.

Local blogger, Sarah Monahan recently visited us at Stix & Stones to try out the local experience she had heard so much about. The result?...she couldn't wait to blog about it. Check out what she had to say below or at http://belfasttravels.com/2015/02/09/stix-and-stones-steak-on-a-stone-experience/

Stix and Stones- Steak on a Stone Experience

On Thursday night we finally got to try out Stix and Stones in Upper Queen Street in Belfast. It’s somewhere I’d wanted to go for a while now, as my only experience of cooking your own steak on a hot, sizzling stone had been in Portugal- and I loved it then!

The steak and seafood restaurant has been open for around 10 months (April 2014) and so far, has gone from strength to strength. It’s run by brothers Daniel and Martin Courtney, and I’d heard great reports about the food.

We arrived about 6.30pm and were seated by our waiter David who asked us if we had been before and, as we had not, talked us through the ‘steak on a stone’ experience- that is, depending on how we like our steaks, exactly how they should be cooked. David was informative and certainly got us excited about what was in store!

Because it was before 7pm, we were able to avail of the pre-theatre menu which is two courses for £14.95 or three courses for £17.95. The restaurant holds around 136 diners and was already filling up by the time we got there. My mouth was definitely watering at the sound of the meat cooking next to us!

For starters I chose the Chicken wings which were covered in a teriyaki sauce and crème fraiche salsa, and served with a cucumber salad. There were about eight or nine wings in the dish- so a great sized portion for a starter. The chicken was juicy and came straight of the bone. The combination of the spicy teriyaki sauce with the soured salsa was also really interesting and flavoursome.

Barry chose the whipped Goats Cheese and Filo pastry starter, which came with pickled pears, quince jam and candied walnuts. Again, the different combinations of the flavours was something he remarked on– from the sweetness of the pears, to the slight tanginess of the goats cheese, there were top marks from him.

For mains we both selected the 8oz Rump of Beef (although Barry was toying with the Seared Tuna steak which also looked lovely). The mains come with a side dish which include hand cut chips, creamed potatoes, red onion and olive salad, or quails eggs. We both went for the hand cut chips.

I was so impressed when the steak came out- it was a large cut and extremely tender. To top it off, the flavour from cooking on the stone was gorgeous. Barry likes his steak rare while I am more medium/well, so it great to cook it yourself, exactly how you like it.

The steak comes with side of pepper sauce and normally I would use a lot of sauce, but I felt the steak was so tasty that it didn’t need very much. The stone stays hot for around 45 minutes so we were able to cook our steak bit by bit, just as the waiter had recommended.

Finally for dessert, we shared the Chocolate and Hazelnut Brownie (which comes with Vanilla ice cream and blood orange foam), and the Caramel Panna Cotta (served with banana sorbet and spiced bread.) To highlight the brownie and spiced bread in particular- the brownie, which was served warm, was succulent and gooey, while the homemade spiced bread had a gorgeous familiar ‘Christmas spice’ taste to it.

Overall, Stix and Stones didn’t disappoint- the place was warm and welcoming, the staff (and in particular, David) were friendly, the stone experience is novel, and the food was top notch- and all at under £18 each! No doubt we’ll be here again soon!

Some may consider cooking your own steak on a hot stone a gimmick, but there’s no doubting the quality of this new eatery’s fantastic food.

Northern Ireland’s love of spending loads of money on eating out continues unabated. We spend more per head in restaurants than Londoners so is it any wonder that new restaurants keep popping up? And while some commentators warn darkly of the madness of this proliferation of bistros and brasseries, many of us welcome it because competition means better standards.

The latest contender to climb into the ring is Stix & Stones, a large, modern place mixing bare timber and leather, grand open spaces, intimate corners and round tables. It is so well lit it feels a bit like a set in a TV studio. Yet there’s nothing false about it or the service.

Stix & Stones is betting on our appetite for doing a bit of cooking ourselves and has introduced the concept of hot stones. For those who enjoy some interaction with their food, what can be more fun than cooking your own steak on a hot stone? Answer: getting a professional chef to cook it for you in a kitchen.

Presenting this as a departure from the norm is full of risk that Stix & Stones will be viewed as a DIY restaurant with no chef. But the reality is that the menu is interesting and varied, that there are not one but two chefs, brothers Martin and Daniel Courtney, and the cook-your-own-steak hot stones thing is only one of a number of otherwise-cooked options.

A bean and bacon soup with truffle oil had the depth of flavour and musky aftertaste of a quality and well-considered dish. Soups are tricky when you want an exceptional one. This was exceptional.

Crab salad made with avocado, apple, lime zest and pak choi is a fresh and zingy success. There are big country chunks of bread on the table but a bit of skinny toast with the crab would have perhaps created a bit of balance.

Sticky chicken wings with a side salad of shredded celery, cucumber and scallion are excellent, slow-cooked, moist, flaking from the bone and served in an unsweetened barbecue sauce. These are the best we’ve had in months.

So what about these stones? The two teens are mad keen to have a go at cooking their own steaks. If this tiny sample constitutes valuable market research then the future looks good for the gimmick. It’s showbusiness, it’s a distraction and it fits in with the relentless move of western civilisation towards “customer interaction”. We’ve seen it happen to museums which now have had to transform themselves into visitor experience centres. If we keep going down this route we will soon be playing our own guitars at the next Red Hot Chilli Peppers gig.

Anyone who knows us at all will know that at PastieBap.com we just love to eat. Especially if that food is steak and especially at novelty restaurants. So it’s quite surprising that it took us so long to get around to trying out Stix & Stoneson Upper Queens Street in Belfast. However, I wouldn’t exactly call Stix & Stones a novelty restauarnt, but cooking your own food on a hot stone is a pretty novel experience.

The decor is modern. It’s simple, without being boring – wooden walls, wooden floors, with lots of wide open spaces and interesting bits and pieces on the walls to look at. There’s not a lot of soft furnishings, but it works. As we’re in quite a large group we get seated at a lovely big round table right by the kitchen, so we can see the pass easily, which is a nice addition to the night.

In terms of drinks, the menu has tons of craft beers and ciders and interesting local fayre to have a look at. You can have a look at the menus available here. We ordered off the a la carte menu which you can see here. There’s quite a variety on the menu, with everything from steak and seafood to pork belly and salads. To start we tried the hot ‘n’ sticky chicken wings and the bruschetta bites. The bruschetta was delicious, little bite sized pieces covered in tomato, basil and capers – although the tomato had been sitting on the bruschetta for a little while and the juice had soaked through, making it soggy rather than crispy, but the flavours were definitely there. Next up, the chicken wings. Not exactly hot (in fact thy weren’t spicy at all) or sticky, come to think of it, but they were amazing. I’m not the biggest fan of traditional chicken wings, but I took a chance on these and it was so worth it. Not your usual buffalo wings, these were something completely different, the skin was crispy, the meat was succulent and they came with the most delicious creme fraiche style sauce that tasted oriental and was extremely more-ish. Words don’t really do it justice, you need to try these wings for yourself!

Let’s get down to business. The real reason we were there was to cook some food on some really hot stones, so most of our group ordered the daily special which was a sharingstone for two people. This was a great deal as you got a 4oz rib-eye, a 4oz sirloin, a tuna steak and king prawns, all served on a stone to share. The best of everything, and at just over £29 between two people this is a great price. We also got three sides – the onion and tomato salad, buttery mashed potato and the cajun fries. I swapped the salad for the kale and bacon croquettes which were exquisite and came with a roast onion puree. The cajun fries also deserve a special mention as they’re so delicious. More like little wedges than fries, these come with cheese, creme fraiche and pest drizzled over them.

They had run out of the bigger sharing stones by the time we got our main, so they split each of ours up onto two stones. This wasn’t really a problem and actually made it easier for everyone to have a go at cooking their own meal on their own stone. The rib-eye and sirloin were great cuts of meat, one served with wild mushrooms on top, and the other with a stone cooked tomato – a simple, but delicious accompaniment for each. I’m not the biggest fan of seafood either, but the tuna steak and the prawns were definitely the highlight of my meal. This is definitely the way to try out foods that you aren’t sure about as you can cook them exactly to your liking. The meal also came with four sauces – a whiskey peppered sauce, garlic and tarragon butter, bernaise or rich pan jus. Each was subtle enough not to overpower the meat, but tasty enough to make the meal more interesting. This is definitely a great experience, especially if you want to make the night a special occasion.

For dessert we tried the cheese board, the cider poached pears, which tasted great, although they were served cold, which wasn’t expected, and the dark chocolate mousse which tasted delightful. The mousse was served with a cherry sorbet which offset the sweetness of the chocolate perfectly.

All in all this was a great meal. We went for a special occasion and I’d definitely recommend Stix & Stones as the place to go if you want to make a big deal about a night out and do something different. Not only is it a fun experience cooking your own food, but the food being served is superb and looks great. The staff were not only attentive, but went out of their way to make sure that everything was going well. Our server even spotted that we were celebrating a birthday and rushed over to offer to take a photo of us all and then presented the birthday boy with a special birthday plate.